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Well, as you all know I’ve been terrible keeping up with posting. Now I have been busy with school work, learning UDK and practicing creating levels, but I’ve been very busy with video games as well. Though I have posted about all of them here.

First I was very involved with Half-Life 2. I got it new for the 360 and it is by far my favorite FPS I have played, and I don’t like FPSs all that much. It had a lot more depth and puzzle to it than a war shooter.

Then I got caught up in replaying Portal, since it was right there on The Orange Box. After that I just had to replay Portal 2, always good fun. From then on whenever I was doing my homework I would listen to the ending credits songs of both games over and over. Both are good music, hilarious, and fun to listen to.

After that I was wondering what to do next when I picked up Pikmin to replay. I did it in about a day, then like with Portal and Portal 2 I just had to play Pikmin 2. That one took me a few days, but was even better than I remember.

Now the Pikmin games are RTS, and that really got me in the mood for more of that. I had StarCraft II but had only played like a third of it when I drifted away from it. I picked it back up with vigor and finished it pretty soon. It is a ton of fun, however it got me in the mood for WarCraft III. I set SC2 aside and picked WC3 back up.

Now I spent a lot of time on WC3, I had only completely beaten it once, and had not beat The Frozen Throne. I finally got through TFT for the first time, I barely remembered any of it. It was finally over, but I still wanted RTS, so I have picked SC2 back up and am working on honing my skills and getting the achievements.

Needless to say I have hardly watched any anime at all in like a month; and barely have kept up with my manga. Actually I think I have only watched one episode or something, an anime a friend recommended called Hyouka. He thought I might like it since I’m a mystery fan. I don’t know after one episode. The characters seem a bit cliche. We’ll see.

Well, now it’s back to SC2 with Murder, She Wrote. The achievement collecting is going well.

Sorry I’ve been gone for so long! Had a nice Easter, though it was only a weekend. This last week I actually had a vacation from school, so I’ve been taking it easy, played a lot of video games and watched a lot of TV. Sometimes at the same time.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I played Pikmin over again, both games. I love them still as much as the first time I played them. The games are amazing, so I decided to talk about them here.Pikmin and Pikmin 2 are GameCube games released in 2001 and 2004 respectively.

In Pikmin you are a bit strange looking humanoid creature, named Olimar, who is traveling through space. Your rocket ship is suddenly hit by an asteroid and you enter a death spiral toward a near planet. Pieces of your ship fly off as you enter the atmosphere and you crash land on this unknown planet.

Olimar survived and analyzes his situation in despair. There are 30 pieces from his ship missing, he must get them back if he hopes to make it off the planet. To make matters worse the atmosphere contains the poisonous gas, oxygen, in large quantities. His life support will only last for 30 days.

Olimar’s situation is not looking good, but as he explores a strange ship suddenly pops up in front of him and releases a seed. A plant sprouts and Olimar goes to pluck it. Lo and behold! It is not a plant, but a strange little red creature. Olimar decided to name them Pikmin, since they look like the Pikpik brand carrots from his own planet. Olimar discovers he can control this Pikmin, and if he collects material from around the world a Pikmin will bring to his ship and sprout more pikmin.

Soon you have 10 Pikmin, and nearby is an obstacle they can move with their combined strength. Beyond this is the ships engine! With this Olimar will be able to fly in the atmosphere to search other areas of the world. He needs at least 30 Pikmin to carry it though, you spend your time growing your Pikmin and soon have a fine army to carry your engine back.

After you get your engine the first day ends, and Olimar takes off for the night to avoid the nocturnal beasts of the planet. The Pikmin ship rises and follows him. Over the next 29 days Olimar must use his Pikmin army to collect his ship parts from many different areas and also fight many different enemies with his little army.

Now Olimar also finds blue Pikmin and yellow ones to go along with his red. Each color has their own attributes to help in the game. The red ones are fireproof, the blue can go in water, and the yellow can be thrown higher and carry bombs. As Olimar the player must navigate the strange world (which actually seems to be some strange future earth) and solve puzzles and defeat enemies using all the Pikmins attributes to obtain his ship parts. Also you can only have 100 Pikmin with you at once.

In Pikmin 2 you return to the planet after you find your company has gone bankrupt and treasure lies on the surface of the planet. There are quite a few differences in Pikmin 2. First of all you control two people, so you can split your tasks and work as a team. You switch between them to monitor projects you have set your Pikmin to. Also there are two new kinds of Pikmin; purple, which are extremely heavy and can carry the same as 10 Pikmin; and white, who are resistant to poison, and poison themselves. They can also dig up buried treasure. Also bombs are gone and yellow are resistant to electricity.

Both games are amazing, and Pikmin 2 is much more expansive and has more strategy. The game is really an RTS. There are big boss battles, and lots of strategy for reaching what you want. Here is a pretty cool music video on it I just found. I recommend Pikmin to anyone who loves strategy. These games are some of the few I would call perfect.